"To restore and conserve fish, wildlife and habitat throughout the state and teach others to do the same."

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Friday, August 31, 2012

This article is from the September-October issue of our newsletter "The Wildlife Volunteer".

Helping wildlife to thrive has become much more complex
over the years.As originally conceived
by the Conservancy wildlife restoration meant restoring water levels in drained
wetlands, removing excess sand from trout streams and replanting prairies.However, time and human behavior has forced
us to broaden our focus as so frequently happens on important endeavors.

We started life doing what everyone in wildlife
restoration was doing – habitat restoration and enhancement projects.But before the 1980’s were over we found
ourselves restoring wild turkeys to Southern Michigan and moose to the Upper
Peninsula.Why, because the
opportunities to restore these important native animals became obvious.

In the late 90’s the same thing happened again –
this time with cougars in the Upper Peninsula.Three men, MWC founding President Dan Robbins, MWC member Mike Zuidema
and DNR Deputy Director Frank Opolka provided credible evidence of Michigan’s
apex predator, the cougar, surviving north of the Straits.We were harassed and cajoled until we agreed
to look into the cougar issue.Our
readers know the “rest of the story.”Indeed, we have a cougar population in both peninsulas that are probably
descended from native Michigan animals.

By 2000 it became obvious to us that the invasion of
harmful aliens by sea and on foot were a serious threat to Michigan’s
wildlife.The conservancy started
getting involved politically in protecting what may be Michigan’s greatest
asset – our Great Lakes resources.Today
our freshwater seas are being threatened by saltwater shipping from the east and
Asian carp from the Mississippi River system.The value of the Great Lakes is incalculable, and these waters define
us.We must protect them.

At the same time, an extremely destructive and
dangerous threat came to us from Eurasia– the wild boar.The boar has now spread to 70 counties and is
establishing itself in our state.The
Conservancy is leading an effort to rid the landscape of boars but the task is
formidable.We will continue to help mobilize
Michigan’s resources against the wild boar.

While the Conservancy has continued to perform
habitat restoration projects current conditions also require us to focus on
controlling invasive and exotic species.We will continue to strive to provide Michigan an abundant and diverse
wildlife legacy.The Conservancy must
succeed because like Russell Bengel and our supporters, the Conservancy
leadership chooses to follow the words of Aldo Leopold – “There are some who
can live without wild things and some who cannot – for those who cannot the
choice is clear.”

Friday, August 24, 2012

This article is from our September-October issue of our newsletter "The Wildlife Volunteer".

The
Michigan Wildlife Conservancy (MWC) recently confirmed the presence of a cougar
in Southern Marquette County.The cougar
was photographed by a cased and padlocked trail camera on private property on
June 1, 2012.The property owners do not
wish to be publicly identified, but are members of the MWC.

Dr.
Patrick Rusz, Director of Wildlife Programs for the Conservancy, and Michael
Zuidema, a retired DNR forester,
verified the trail camera’s location on a well-worn wildlife trail atop a
wooded ridge.The camera has also
photographed wolves, coyotes, fishers and numerous other species at the same
site over a four-year period.In late
June, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources also confirmed the
authenticity of the cougar photo.

The
MWC publicized this photograph because it may be the best, clearest photograph
of a wild Michigan cougar ever taken.It
is also unusually interesting because Mr. Zuidema has recorded over 20 credible
cougar sightings in the same vicinity since the 1970s.These include several sightings within a few
miles of the trail camera location.

Dr.
Rusz stated that “the long history of sighting reports in the area indicates
the cougar photographed on June 1 may be part of a resident population rather
than a wandering cat from a western state.”Dr. Rusz has studied cougars for the Conservancy for 14 years and is
co-author of a peer-reviewed study that confirmed cougars in both peninsulas of
Michigan by analyses of DNA in
droppings.He has also compiled a long
list of additional physical evidence dating back to 1966, and notes that
Michigan State College zoologist Richard Manville documented several cougar sightings
or incidents when he inventoried the fauna of Marquette County’s Huron Mountains
from 1939 to 1942.

The
large volume of recent Michigan evidence includes 17 MDNR
confirmations since the agency formed a cougar team of specially trained
biologists in 2008.These confirmations
include one last May when a cougar was photographed with a hand-held camera
near Skanee in Baraga County.That
photograph was taken about 50 miles north of the Marquette County trail camera
location.

“The
MDNR cougar team should now look at the very good evidence of a remnant cougar
population collected before 2008,” said Bill Taylor, President of the
Conservancy.“They could still easily
verify cougar photos taken in the 1990’s in Alcona and Oscoda Counties in the
Lower Peninsula and some others.The
vegetation and other landmarks needed to confirm the photos are still there.”

Citizen
science is a phrase often used to describe the active participation of our
citizens in the collection of information about wildlife.Citizen-science projects can involve observing,
censusing or documenting certain species, or the actual collection of specimens
for study.As state and federal wildlife
budgets become more strained the need for “citizen science” collected
information will become a necessity.

On
the next page is an excellent example of citizen science in action.Here an outdoor oriented couple, and MWC
members, with land in Southern Marquette County decided to document the
wildlife on their property.Using
stationary trail cameras they have photographed more than a dozen animal
species, some of Michigan’s rarest, in less than four years.

Please
enjoy this amazing citizen science project, and ask yourself if you too could
help us by photo-documenting Michigan’s wildlife where you live or recreate.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Participants in one of the boat tours of the St. Clair River Stugeon Spawning Reef

Lake sturgeon wasted no time moving onto a newly
constructed spawning reef in the St. Clair River near Algonac.By mid-May fisheries biologists verified
sturgeon on the first sets of rock placed in 30 feet of water near Dickinson and
Harsen’s Islands.The findings came just
two weeks after the project was celebrated on May 1, 2012 with a public
reception on the shoreline and boat tours of the reef area.

The reef was constructed of limestone and other
types of rock and was modeled after a reef installed three years ago at the
head of Fighting Island in the Detroit River International Wildlife
Refuge.The Fighting Island reef was the
2008-2009 Featured Project of the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy and the first
Canada-U.S. jointly funded fish restoration project in the Great Lakes.The Conservancy was the only U.S. non-profit
organization to make a substantial financial contribution to the Fighting
Island reef and also provided valuable technical assistance during the design
and cost analysis phases of that unique project.

The Conservancy also played a key role in the St.
Clair River reef construction, administering a $75,000 construction grant from
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Coastal Grant Program.The Conservancy worked with University of
Michigan Sea Grant Program personnel as well as the Fish and Wildlife
Service.The total cost of constructing
the reef was more than $335,000.Most of
the cost was covered by other federal grants which will also fund a long-term
research project to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of reef-building in the
Great Lakes.

Once common and widespread, the lake sturgeon
dramatically declined around 1900; it now has a limited distribution in the
Great Lakes region, and is a threatened species in Michigan waters.Inland populations in Michigan are sparse and
restricted primarily to the Manistique, Menominee, Sturgeon, and Indian Rivers
in the Upper Peninsula, and the Cheboygan River watershed (including Burt,
Mullet, and Black Lakes) in the Lower Peninsula.Occasionally, sturgeon show up in other
rivers such as the Kalamazoo, Grand, Muskegon and Saginaw.

The St. Clair River historically served as an
important spawning grounds for many other native species as well as
sturgeon.But channelization, loss of
coastal wetlands, filling/armoring shorelines, water pollution, and dredging
limestone bedrock and gravel caused the sturgeon population to drop to less
than one percent of its former abundance.Many conservationists doubted whether the area’s once famed lake
sturgeon fishery could ever bounce back.However, with improvements to water quality over the past 40 years,
federal scientists have begun to test whether small, strategically-placed
spawning reefs can benefit the unique species.The Fighting Island reef’s success helped pave the way for the St. Clair
River reef and this new effort may be a catalyst for a series of reef projects
in the future.Young sturgeon are
already coming off the reef at Fighting Island and planners expect the St. Clair
reef to also be successful.

“Sturgeon are amazing,” said Jim Felgenauer,
President of the St. Clair-Detroit River Sturgeon for Tomorrow
organization.“Catching a sturgeon is an
unique experience, because after I release it, my grandson might catch the same
fish 20 to 40 years from now.”Some
individual sturgeon have lived 150 years.

Lake Sturgeon on the new spawning reef

The Conservancy wants to thank Chuck and Kathy
Whitley of Grand Rapids, for their important financial support of the sturgeon
spawning reef.